Shahab Ahmed and the Hermeneutics of Islam
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.42442Keywords:
Shahab Ahmed, hermeneutics, Islam, Heidegger, Thomas Sheehan, authenticityAbstract
In the posthumously published book, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (2016), Shahab Ahmed (1966–2015) presented a new conceptualisation of Islam to address two points: to re-conceptualise Islam in terms of contradiction, and re-present what it meant to be Islamic as a challenge to existing conceptualisations. This article argues that Ahmed’s rethinking of Islam/Islamic is properly situated as a revivalist catholic hermeneutics, and as such, his conceptualisation is a reworking of insider discourse writ large. It further examines Ahmed’s hermeneutics through a Heideggerian lens.
References
Ahmed, Shahab. 2016. What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Ahmed, Shahla. 2017. What is Islam-Session 3. QMUL School of History. Online: https://youtu.be/4g0kwx5awuw (accessed June 4, 2020).
Andani, Khalil. 2016. What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 28(1): 114-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2016.1264769
Choudhury, Nafay. 2017. Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. South Asia Research 37(3): 349-52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0262728017725657.
Doostdar, Alireza. 2017. What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Shii Studies Review 1(1-2): 277-82. https://doi.org/10.1163/24682470-12340014
Fuerst, Ilyse Morgenstein, and Kristian Petersen (eds). 2016. What is Islam? Forum-An Introduction. Marginalia: Los Angeles Review of Books. Online: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/islam-forum-introduction/ (accessed June 1, 2020).
Heidegger, Martin. 1971a. The Thing. In Poetry, Language, Thought, edited by Albert Hofstadter, 165-82. Harper Colophon, New York.
Heidegger, Martin. 1971b. On the Way to Language, translated by Peter D. Hertz. Harper & Row, New York.
Heidegger, Martin. 2010. Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh, revised and with a Foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Hughes, Aaron. 2017. What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. Online: https://readingreligion.org/books/what-islam (accessed June 4, 2020).
Kamal, Muhammad. 2010. From Essence to Being: The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra and Martin Heidegger. ICAS Press, London. 2013. Mulla Sadra and Martin Heidegger: A Philosophical Turn. In The Misty Land of Ideas and the Light of Dialogue: An Anthology of Comparative Philosophy: Western & Islamic, edited by Ali Paya, 105-126. ICAS Press, London.
Kockelmans, Joseph J. 1985. Heidegger on Metaphor and Metaphysics. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 47(3): 415-50.
Melchert, Christopher. 1997. The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E. Brill, Leiden.
Melchert, Christopher. 2011. Agreeing to Disagree (or Not): The Shaping of Islam in the Early Middle Ages. The Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University. Online: https://youtu.be/3NgSVl9rJqQ (accessed June 4, 2020).
Moser, Kata, Urs Gösken and Josh M. Hayes. 2019. Heidegger in the Islamicate World. Rowman & Littlefield International, London.
Moten, Abdul Rashid. 2017. What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Australian Journal of Islamic Studies 2(3): 87-90.
Pregill, Michael E. 2017. I Hear Islam Singing: Shahab Ahmed's What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Harvard Theological Review 110(1): 149-65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816016000420
Sheehan, Thomas. 1986. The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity. Crucible, Wellingborough.
Sheehan, Thomas. 2000. From Divinity to Infinity. In The Once and Future Jesus, edited by Robert Funk, 27-44. Santa Rosa, CA: The Westar Institute.
Sheehan, Thomas. 2015. Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift. Rowman and Littlefield, London.
Varga, Somogy, and Charles Guignon. 2020. Authenticity. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 1-43. Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
